


Human After All

by OfLaceAndGoggles



Category: Daft Punk, Deadmau5 (Musician)
Genre: Dictatorship, Dystopia, France (Country), Mystery, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-27
Updated: 2013-03-27
Packaged: 2017-12-06 16:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/737759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfLaceAndGoggles/pseuds/OfLaceAndGoggles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The French government has finally done the unthinkable; outlawing any form of music other than what they provide for its people. Producers and deejays are being assassinated and exiled left and right. There's a certain air of misfortune over the entire country. After finding a broken work-bot in the gutters of dystopian France, will Thomas and Guy-Manuel be able to help Colette and save their beloved country, maybe even the world? (re-posted from my deviantART)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It had been a pretty normal day, all things considered. Thomas and Guy had decided to take a trip to the hole-in-the-wall electronics store to see if there were any goodies they could play with. Thomas was hoping to upgrade his helmet, and Guy wanting a part for a synthesizer.  
  
It was Thomas who found her first, propped up against a shelf in the back of the store.  At least, he thought the android was female. He could barely tell, with her synthetic skin missing in places and some of her circuitry showing in others. What little clothing she had left hung off of her thin frame. But it was Guy who had decided to take the abandoned android with them.  
  
"Do you think we can fix her? I wonder what her function is...." Thomas asked, picking it...her...up carefully. She felt cold, her matted black hair flopping to the side. He yelled up to the shopkeeper. "How much do you want for the android?"  
"Two hundred credits."  
Guy spoke up, noticing the spark in Thomas's eyes. "Will you take one fifty?" He asked quietly.  
The shop owner ground his teeth a little but nodded. "Yeah." He held out a sweaty palm for the credits, which Guy gave him and they walked out of the store, android in tow.  
  
When they made it back to their house, Thomas set her down on the couch and went to their workshop, looking for his toolbox. Guy looked all over for an activation switch of some kind. He found one on the back of her neck, but didn't touch it. Thomas was slightly more tech-savvy than he was, and he didn't want to mess things up. Thomas came back with the box and instantly knew where the switch was. He flipped it and watched the scratched up face to see if there was a reaction.  
  
  
She opened her eyes and blinked a couple of times, her optics showing a deep green color. "H-hello? Where have you taken me?" she asked, turning her head to look at her surroundings.  
  
Guy's eyes widened at the slightly metallic, but otherwise human-sounding voice. She sounded like  a typical teenager.  
Thomas worked up the courage to speak. "Uhm. Hello. We've taken you to our home. You're in need of repair. What is your name, and how old are you?"  
  
She blinked again. "Colette...." She ran an internal diagnostic of the damages, the data telling her that her right arm was severely damaged, and that the hand on that arm was broken. "My right arm is damaged, and my right hand is broken," she informed them.  
  
Thomas nodded. "Colette, my name is Thomas. This is Guillaume-"  
"Guy. Call me Guy, please. What is your directive?"  
  
She bit her already torn lip. "I'm an entertaining android. I talk to people if they are lonely, sing at parties, or dance in the nightclubs. That's about it." She pushed her matted hair out of her face with her uninjured hand.  
  
Thomas and Guy looked at each other. This would be a fun project. "You said you can sing?" he asked her, while reaching for her hand to try and fix it. She nodded. "Yes, all entertaining androids can."  
  
Thomas peeled the fake skin back carefully, looking over the almost shattered hand. He wondered what had happened to her to cause so much damage. He pulled a screwdriver out of the toolbox and began to unscrew the protective plates to check the wiring. "Guillaume. Go get my soldering gun, sil vous plait?"  
Guy nodded silently and went to get it, humming softly to himself.  
Thomas looked at Colette, setting the unscrewed plates aside. "What happened to you, if you're comfortable telling me?"  
Guy came back with the soldering gun just as Colette started to speak. "I was replaced. By another, more beautiful android. She could sing better than me, dance faster. So, the owner of the club I worked at damaged me purposely, so that no one else would give me work."  
Guy bit his lip. "That is horrible." He handed Thomas the soldering gun and sat next to him, watching intently.  
  
"Do you know how you ended up deactivated?" Thomas wanted to know.  
Colette shook her head. "No. The last thing I remember is when the club owner damaged me."  
The next few minutes passed in silence, with the occasional hum of electricity as Colette's circuits tried to compensate for the temporary losses in power to her hand and lower arm.  
Colette began to hum quietly, a tune remembered from dancing in the club. Guy's head tilted slightly. He knew that song! "Colette, what song is that, the one you're humming?" he asked, slightly shocked. Colette answered without hesitation. "Something About Us."  
Thomas almost dropped the soldering gun, wide eyes flicking up to her face. "But....how could you know that song? Our tracks haven't been played in clubs for six years!"  
Colette's eyebrow (what was left of it) quirked. "'Our tracks'? You don't mean...." She stared at the men in front of her. "You're....Daft Punk?"  
  
Thomas smiled a tiny smile. "Yes. Or rather, we were, until our music got banned at the clubs. So, explain. How do you know that song?"  
  
Colette still looked slightly taken aback. She wiggled her fingers, an almost human tic. "I...bootlegged them from the club's hard drive. They still had all the tracks saved there, in ghost files. Password protected. But I cracked it, and found all the banned tracks. Not just Daft Punk, but deadmau5 and Feed Me, too.... all the stuff that they've been slowly banning for the last six or seven years. And I downloaded it to a drive and hid it in my chest cavity, and figured out a way to put it into my mainframe. So, if they want to kill all the music, they'll have to find me and...well, you know. They'd have to get through me, first."  
  
Thomas blinked, a little stunned that an android would be this dedicated to any one thing, much less music. Robots tended not to like music.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Colette, Guy and Thomas have a discussion.

Thomas was busily working on the repair of Colette's hand, while Guy had located a hairbrush and started trying to get the tangles out of her shoulder-length hair. Colette spoke up suddenly, curious about something.  
"Monsieur Thomas, why did you and Monsieur Guy take me to your house?" Her metallic voice had a slightly musical lilt to it, and it was pleasant to listen to. Guy paused in his brushing for a moment to think of a good way to put it. "Well, Thomas /was/ looking for some parts to upgrade his old helmet, to have something to occupy his time. But then we found you, and decided we wanted to fix you."  
Thomas nodded, putting the protective plates back on her fingers. "Exactly, and then when you told us about smuggling our music out of that club, we decided something."  
  
Colette's head tilted. "What did you decide?"  
Guy spoke up again, resuming his brushing. "We want you to stay with us. If you'd like to, anyway."  
She opened her mouth to speak, but Thomas cut her off before she could give an answer.  
"Before you react," the tall blonde man told her, "Know this. We are not simply offering a place to live. We need your help, Colette." He pulled a bottle of what looked like rubber cement out of the toolbox and opened it, brushing the substance over the protective plates, spots where her skin was missing. The synthetic skin sizzled quietly and then spread to cover the holes, blending seamlessly together. Guy gasped quietly in spite of himself. "Where did you get that!?" He asked Thomas as he put away the bottle.  
Thomas only grinned. "Borrowed it."  
  
Colette interrupted their little exchange. "What do you need my help with?"  
Guy looked at her, finishined brushing her hair. "We're still playing our music in underground clubs and raves whenever we get the chance. But the problem is, we still can't get back into the normal clubs. What we would need from you is to hack into their security files and install permissions that would stop the sensors from going off if we walked into one of those places. And one other thing..." The quiet Frenchman looked at the ground, as if embarrassed of what he was about to say.  
Thomas closed his toolbox, looking at Guy quizzically. "What is it?" Colette nodded, hoping to urge Guy onward.  
  
He bit his lip. "I want you to sing something for us. Please. It's important."  
Thomas raised an eyebrow at the request, but looked to Colette for her reaction.  
She blinked. "What would you like me to sing?" She looked hardly fazed by the question, it was part of her directive, after all.  
Guy thought for a moment, licking the corner of his lip. "Something About Us."  
Colette raised her eyebrows. _Guillaume-Emmanuel de Homem-Christo just asked you to sing a song that he wrote. Calm down and sing it, Colette!_  
  
She took a deep breath and sang softly, her bio-engineered voice having just enough of that lilt to flow with the words, telling it from a different point of view then what it was originally meant. It spoke to Guy and Thomas both, hearing a female singing it. It was a song full of not just affection, but a deep, overwhelming sense of longing and loneliness. She closed her eyes halfway through the song, remembering the melody and tempo. She poured all the emotion she had (whether it was real or not, she had no idea) into the song, telling a story just as much as she sang the melody. When she finished, she was met with silence. She popped one eye open to look at the two legends in front of her. Thomas's jaw was hanging open, an expression of shock on his face. Guy on the other hand looked like he was wiping away a tear from his eye. "That...was beautiful, Colette. Yes, I think you'll do very nicely."  
Thomas now turned to Guy. "Guillaume! What?! You're not thinking about...."  
  
Guy nodded seriously. "I am. I want to bring back the music. And not just ours. Deadmau5. Tiesto. Danger. Justice. Skrillex. Newer artists, trying to get out there. They're all underground now, just like we are. We are in the electronic age now, why shouldn't we be allowed to listen to electronic music?"  
Thomas's eyes widened. "What you're suggesting is....a revolution?"  
Guy gave them both a rare smile. "Oui."  
Colette could hardly believe she was hearing this. "You want me...to be a part of this? How could I possibly help you?"  
Guy's smile got a little wider. "You weren't replaced only for the reason that you were outmoded, were you? The hacked files didn't go unnoticed, but the owner didn't want to draw attention to the fact that he had the tracks in the first place. So he just claimed that he wanted a different android, but then damaged you so that you would keep quiet about it. Am I right?"  
Thomas and Colette both stared at Guy, Colette nodding slowly. "That's exactly what happened. But what does that have to do with revolt, Monsieur Guy?"  
"Why did you steal the tracks?"  
Colette huffed, getting a little frustrated. "Because. I think we should be able to decide for ourselves what we want to listen to and what makes us happy."  
Thomas smiled. "I understand what Guillaume is getting at now. He knows that you're just as passionate about this as we are."  
There was a few moments of silence before Colette remembered something. "Do you know what 'Colette' means in French?" She asked them.  
Thomas shook his head. He only actually used French when he was speaking with Guy or his family members, but Guy's eyes lit up. "Oui. 'Victory of the people'."  
Colette smiled for the first time since she'd met the duo. "Sign me up. It's practically destiny, or something like that."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sneaking into a club is not as easy as Colette thought.

Colette could hardly believe it. She had spent an hour working over the servers in the club that Daft Punk were taking over tonight, in order to allow Thomas and Guy to actually get through the door without receiving an electric shock. It had been almost too easy to get into the club, with her newly dyed pink hair and candi-raver clothes that were the fashion in this part of Paris. All she'd done was chat up the bartender and he'd simply waved her to the back, thinking she wanted to meet the dj playing. Once back there, Colette pretended she was going to go use the restroom and instead went into the server room and pulled a few wires, and popped in one of her own wires hidden under her hair to hack into the system. She was halfway through when she heard a voice behind her.

"Hacking into the system, huh? Dangerous thing to do for an android."  
Colette froze. The voice didn't sound angry, just amused. And it was human, which was a good indicator the club security wasn't after her. She turned slowly to face the owner of the voice, wondering who it could be, neck cable still connected to the server. She was met by a tall...kind of lanky figure, wearing an old-style baseball cap and his skin decorated with tattoos, the bright green one on his neck standing out in the half-light. Colette gasped softly, barely audible over the muffled bass thumps coming from the main room of the club. "Oh my...you're...."

The man smirked. "What's a pretty 'droid like you doing in the back of the club with a guilty conscience?"

Colette was stunned. "I could ask you what you're doing here, too. You're not supposed to be here either, Zimmerman."

The man smirked again. "Joel. And I know. But if I know what you're doing, you're trying to sneak someone into the club. Who?"

Colette bit the synthetic skin on her lip. Could she trust him? He was in the same boat as Thomas and Guy, the music of deadmau5 banned from the same clubs as Daft Punk. She took a deep breath and disconnected her cable, now that her tampering was over with, letting it retract back into her neck. "You can't tell anyone."

Joel laughed quietly. "Lady, I'm not going to tell anyone. Trust me. You know exactly who I am. I'm not even supposed to be out of my house, much less trying to crash a club. Now, who are you trying to help? Tiesto?"

Colette shook her head. "No. Bigger. As in legendary."

Joel's eyes widened slightly. "You don't mean...but they've been in hiding for five years!"

Colette smiled. "Yes. Them."

Joel took off his hat, running a hand through his thinning hair before replacing it. "Wow....and you're helping them? Do you have a name?"

Colette nodded. "Colette." She stepped around him to close the door on them so they could speak privately. "Long story short, we want to bring back the music," She told Joel, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Joel nodded slowly. "If anyone could do it, it would be Thomas and Guy. They started the revolution way back when, and they can do it again. I wanna help, if I can. What are you guys doing right now, sneaking back into the clubs to crash them....and....?"  
"Playing the old music. All of the banned tracks."  
"How? They were sealed away, weren't they?"  
Colette grinned. "To sum it up, I have them. I bootlegged them from the server in the club where my directive was, but I got found out and they fired me and trashed me. But they didn't get the music."  
Joel looked impressed. "Holy shit...and Thomas and Guy have all of it now?"  
She shook her head. "No. We sent some of it back to whoever we could contact. Feed Me. Danger. Tiesto. But they've been the only ones we could get a link to, to give it back."

The dj nodded, thinking fast. "Well, obviously I'd like mine back. And I can talk to Skrillex and Basshunter see if they can get anyone else on board. Who should I have them contact?"  
"Me."  
"You? Why not Thomas or Guy?"  
"Joel. Seriously? You think it's bad with you not being able to leave your house? Every time _they_ leave their house, they are risking assassination because of how powerful they are in this culture."

Joel bit his lip. "Alright. I see your point. But I'm not staying here tonight. I'm actually just scoping the place out. I was actually going to disable the servers, but what you did was a lot smarter. Props, 'Lette."

Colette blushed softly at the shortened version of her name. "Thanks."  
He held out his hand, and Colette shook it. He turned and opened the door, disappearing into the club.  
Colette looked down at the piece of...paper...that Joel had left behind in her hand. She hadn't seen paper in ages. She slipped it into a pocket and headed back outside to find Thomas and Guy, who were waiting for her in a coffee shop across the street, wearing fake mustaches and wigs.  
"Everything's set," She told him, snagging a sip of his coffee.  
"Hey, I thought you couldn't eat?" Guy pointed out.  
Colette smiled. "I can, but just not full meals. My stomach is significantly smaller than an actual human's."  
Thomas made a small "oh" noise of understanding, while Guy pulled a vidscreen out of his coat pocket and checked out the club's security feed. He flicked his finger along the thin plastic, changing the angle or switching between cameras until he tugged on Thomas's arm. "Thomas. Is that who I think it is?"  
Thomas looked at the feed Guy indicated, eyes widening. "Yeah. But what's he doing here?"  
Colette smiled, knowing exactly who they were talking about. "He talked to me."  
Both heads across the table snapped up to look at her. "What?" They said in unison.  
"I talked to deadmau5," she said in a low voice. "He said he wants in, and that he'd talk to some friends about it and see what they think about wanting in too."  
Guy's jaw dropped. "How...."  
Colette laughed, a slightly mechanical noise. "I'll tell you later," she teased, reaching for more coffee.  
Guy pouted slightly, making Colette laugh harder. Guy-Man looked ridiculous in that getup.


End file.
